Fearon & Laitin (2003) "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War"

• What conditions increase the probability of civil war onset?
• Does ethnic or religious diversity cause conflict, or do structural factors dominate?
• How do state capacity and economic development affect conflict risk?
• What role does terrain and geography play in insurgency feasibility?

Binary indicator: 1 if a civil war began in this country-year, 0 otherwise. Fearon & Laitin define civil wars as internal conflicts with organized violence, at least 1,000 battle deaths, and effective resistance by both sides.

Percentage of a country's territory that is mountainous, per the Geomorphic Units of the World dataset. Logged in regression models. Higher values increase insurgency viability by providing rebel sanctuary.

Binary indicator: 1 if there was a three-or-more-point change in Polity score in the previous three years. Captures regime transitions and political turbulence that may lower the cost of civil war initiation.

Binary indicator: 1 if the state has territory that is physically separated from the main territory (e.g., islands, exclaves). Noncontiguity creates zones where state capacity is lower and rebel control is easier to establish.

Binary indicator: 1 if fuel exports exceeded one-third of export revenues. Oil states may face conflict due to prize capture incentives, weaker tax-based state institutions, or Dutch disease effects on state capacity.

Binary indicator: 1 if the state became independent within the prior two years. New states face elevated conflict risk due to weak institutions, contested borders, and unresolved ethnic or regional claims.

Probability that two randomly selected individuals belong to different religious groups (Herfindahl index). Ranges 0-1. Included as a control alongside ethnic fractionalization; not found to be a robust predictor of civil war onset.

GDP per capita, typically logged and lagged one year. One of the strongest predictors of civil war onset: wealthier countries have lower risk, reflecting higher opportunity costs of rebellion and greater state capacity to deter it.

Total population, logged and lagged one year. Larger populations increase civil war risk — more people means more potential recruits and more heterogeneous grievances, though the mechanism is contested.

Binary indicator: 1 if Polity IV score is between -5 and +5, indicating a mixed or incoherent regime type. Anocracies are predicted to have higher conflict risk than either full democracies or full autocracies (inverted-U).

Per capita income (logged, lagged) is one of the strongest predictors of civil war onset: a one standard deviation increase reduces onset probability by roughly half.

Ethnic fractionalization (ELF index) is NOT a significant predictor of civil war onset once per capita income, terrain, and state capacity are controlled for.

Mountainous terrain significantly increases civil war onset probability. Log mountainous terrain has a positive and significant coefficient. Mountains provide insurgents with sanctuary and raise the costs of counterinsurgency.

Population size (logged, lagged) increases civil war onset risk. Larger countries have more potential recruits and greater heterogeneity.

Political instability (3+ point Polity change in prior 3 years) significantly increases civil war onset. Regime transitions create windows of vulnerability.

Anocracy (mixed regime, Polity -5 to +5) is positively associated with civil war onset, consistent with the inverted-U hypothesis. Neither full democracies nor full autocracies have elevated onset risk compared to anocracies.

Oil exporters have higher civil war onset probability. Oil rents reduce the need for broad-based taxation, weaken state-society ties, and may create prize-capture incentives for rebel groups.

New states (independent less than 2 years) have substantially elevated civil war risk. State formation and decolonization create windows of institutional fragility.

Noncontiguous territory increases civil war onset. Separated territories are harder to control militarily and may harbor aggrieved groups beyond state reach.

Religious fractionalization is not a significant predictor of civil war onset when controlled for other factors. Religion per se does not drive conflict risk.

The key mechanism for civil war is insurgency feasibility, not ethnic grievance. Conditions that make guerrilla warfare viable (rough terrain, weak states, poverty for cheap recruits) matter more than ethnic diversity or polarization.

IV/2SLS using settler mortality shows institutions have a large causal effect on income per capita. 1 SD improvement in expropriation risk ~ 1+ log point increase in income.

Once institutions are instrumented, geography has no direct effect and trade is insignificant. Institutions dominate.

1 SD improvement in corruption index associated with +4 pp investment rate and +0.5 pp annual growth.

ICRG-based property rights measures have substantially larger positive association with investment and growth than political freedom indices.

Strong correlation (r~0.80) between rule of law and GDP per capita across 200+ countries, though causal inference requires instrumentation.

GDP per capita (log) positively predicts life satisfaction. A one log unit increase is associated with approximately +0.35 points on the Cantril ladder. Log GDP per capita independently explains roughly 25% of cross-national variance in ladder scores.

The income-happiness relationship shows diminishing returns at high income levels. The slope between log GDP per capita and life satisfaction is steeper for lower-income countries, suggesting that additional income yields larger wellbeing gains in poorer nations.

Population size is the single strongest predictor of raw conflict event counts, reflecting an exposure effect where larger populations mechanically generate more recordable events.

Using extreme bounds analysis on 60+ proposed coup determinants, the most robustly significant predictors of coup attempts are: (1) past coup history, (2) low GDP per capita, (3) low economic growth, (4) regime type (anocracy), and (5) military regime incumbent. These survive specification changes across hundreds of model permutations.

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